Special Agent Tom Lange Box Set

by T. J. Brearton

  He found the teenager’s bedroom door closed and knocked on the DO NOT ENTER sign.

  “Gloria? Need to talk to you. Sorry to be a pain.”

  After a moment came her muffled voice: “Do I have to?”

  “It would be really appreciated. I want to help you and your mom. I want to help your dad.”

  “I don’t care about him.”

  “I understand that.” He looked down at the floor, his head inches from the door. “I do, though. I care about him. I care about you.”

  He heard her moving around and then the door opened. She gave him a long look, her eyes lingering over his decorated face. Then she sat down on the bed. He stayed in the doorway. “Thanks.”

  “All right.”

  “So your dad — he comes to visit you? And your mom stays around when he does?”

  “Yeah. Well, he used to.”

  “What do you guys do together? Or what did you do?”

  “He hasn’t been here in, um, since last year. Since I was in ninth grade.”

  “Yeah? You guys talk, though? Phone calls or text or email or anything?”

  “Why are you looking for him? What did he do?”

  “Well, it’s kind of complicated. But I won’t lie to you. We think he might’ve robbed somebody. Somebody pretty important.”

  She looked away, out the bedroom window. Without looking at him she picked her phone up off the bed and held it out to him. Tom walked into the room and hesitated, then took it from her.

  “The last message is from, like, three months ago. Here, let me show you.” She took the phone back and used her thumbs to unlock the screen, then returned it to him.

  Kitty. Just know that I love you.

  “He calls you Kitty?”

  Gloria didn’t answer. Tom scrolled back through the messages, few and far between. How you doing? Just checking in. I love you. How’s school? Gloria’s later responses were terse, one-word, but sometimes she embellished, Got a 90 on my math test! They went back a little over two years.

  “That when you got your phone?” Tom asked. “Back at the beginning here?”

  “Yeah. My thirteenth birthday.”

  “Thanks for letting me see those,” Tom said. He handed it back to her, having committed Guttridge’s number to memory. He highly doubted it would be a working number now, but it was always worth a try.

  “So what would you do when your dad visited?” Tom backtracked across the room and leaned against the doorframe.

  “Not much. He couldn’t take me anywhere. We don’t have anything in common, really. Except math, I guess.”

  “Yeah? Your dad good at math?”

  “Got to be if you’re a drug dealer, I guess.”

  “Yeah — it might not hurt.”

  She looked at him, evaluating for any deception. “Why do you care about my dad? You just want to arrest him. For the robbery, right?”

  “Well, he has to deal with that, yeah. Where was he living, though, the last time you saw him?”

  “Probably in his car or something.”

  “In his car. Really?”

  Gloria looked out the window again. “You’re not going to find him. He was in the army, you know. He’s good at hiding.”

  “Did he talk to you about hiding in the army?”

  “No, but he’s really good. He’s good at finding places.” Her gaze came back to him again. Tom could see the father in the daughter’s face, through the nose and jawline. He thought of Guttridge seeing his little girl in Lemon Madras. Wanting to protect her.

  “Like what places?” Tom asked.

  Gloria shrugged, like she was getting bored. “He can dive. He would dive Eagle’s Nest. Those underwater caves? But I think they shut them down because too many people were drowning.”

  “Where are those? I’m not really from around here.”

  “The caves? Eagle’s Nest is right by Tampa. On the ocean side. But I mean, he’s not hiding there. He’s not just sitting underwater.”

  “No. I guess not. Hey, Gloria, you got any recent pictures of your dad?”

  It was going on 4 p.m. when the crime scene unit arrived. They were focused on the pot plants in the bedroom, but Tom wanted what was in the shed. Sarah had admitted that Frank kept things there. The crime scene people boxed it all up and hauled it off to be processed into the county evidence room.

  An hour later he was signing into the evidence room at the Polk County Sherriff’s Office and pulling things back out of the boxes. He shuffled through a stack of photographs. One showed Frank Guttridge alone in his military uniform. If Sarah had been the homecoming queen, Frank had been prom king. Tom took in the boxy jaw with a dimple in the chin, the long eyelashes and the straight nose.

  A different, framed picture showed Frank standing beside a Humvee, surrounded by three fellow infantrymen, each of them grinning. One held a cardboard-and-marker sign that said Abilene. The men wore desert camouflage and one had his rifle out, finger on the trigger guard. Another flashed a peace sign. Tom looked closely at the man with two fingers in the air, the dark hair just visible beneath his helmet, his brown skin. Tom was no expert, but the guy looked like a Miccosukee Indian. Someone, anyway, that Tom had laid eyes on just the other day.

  At the reservation.

  * * *

  They had a name, Frank Guttridge. They had his picture — a new one, which Tom had sent to Skokie, begging them to have Lemon Madras take another look. They had his DMV records, his house, his social security number. Soon, his taxes. They had his file from the VA. They had his wife and daughter. The only thing they didn’t have was a hard reason to bust him.

  The US Army didn’t provide military locator services. Tom searched the National Archives and Records Administration database and, by eight o’clock that night, was looking at a list of infantrymen who were part of Guttridge’s unit.

  He went back to the Miccosukee Reservation with a name: Ronald Parker. A white man’s name and a Native American’s face, in combat between 2004 and 2007. Parker was thirty-six.

  Only the FBI had jurisdiction within the res and that meant only the FBI could interview a potential Miccosukee witness. Malone was there, but it was Agent Akron who conducted the interview. Tom watched from a small room behind one-way glass with Blythe and others.

  “Little Lemon Madras identified you,” Akron said to the Parker. “So, this story that she was found wandering around a section of swampland a quarter mile from the Indian Village . . . we know that’s not true. We know that she was brought to you directly. Can I ask, Mr. Parker, have you ever worn your hair in a scalp lock? You know — up like this?”

  Parker stared as Akron demonstrated a high feathering of hair.

  “No,” Parker said. One word, like most of his answers.

  “Okay. Let’s just . . . You have three children of your own, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you work as an electrician, usually in Miami office buildings — changing out ballasts and switchers and that sort of thing. You’re a veteran. Army Infantry, three tours in Iraq. Your unit on your last tour . . . you were with a guy named Frank Guttridge.”

  “Is that a question?”

  “Well, yes and no. We know the answer. I’d like to hear your answer.”

  Parker sniffed, turned away from Akron and looked toward the one-way glass. “Yeah. Gutt was in my unit.”

  “Okay. Okay, Mr. Parker. So, this is what’s going to happen. We’re glad you took the girl in, okay? Everybody. Her parents — all of us. You did the right thing. But here’s where you made a mistake. You didn’t turn her in right away. You kept her while everyone was out looking, while her parents were worried sick. You were protecting her, you say, because Frank told you what had happened. You feared for her safety. But I think there’s another reason, too . . . you were protecting Frank, buying him some time. Which makes you an accessory. It makes you part of this. Do you understand that?”

  “I’m not saying anything.”

 
“But here it is, Mr. Parker . . . we don’t want to press charges against you. We just want to find Frank. We want to help him. We know he was blackmailed into this.” Akron pulled out some papers. “The girl describes him. Says he treated her well. We have a statement from Aardvark Wrecking Company describing how Frank paid them a thousand in cash to treat his vehicle as an end-of-life vehicle and scrap it. We have an individual who gave information to police, describing an army veteran. Mr. Parker, the only thing you’re doing now is digging yourself a hole. And you have your children to think about. Do you want to be seeing them on the other side of bulletproof glass on visitation day? Or do you want to stay in their lives? We just want to find Frank. We’ll find him eventually, but if you help us, it might go quicker. And the federal prosecutors will show you leniency. Do you understand?”

  Parker looked at Akron for a long time. “I don’t know anything.”

  “Mr. Parker, the girl was with you. You’re lucky you’re not already sitting in federal prison . . .”

  It went on.

  Tom stared at Parker and thought back to that face in the trees, the colored hair sticking up. It could have been Parker, but it had been such a brief glimpse he’d caught of whoever was hiding there — just a flash, really, something Tom might’ve doubted he ever saw if it wasn’t for the fact Malone had seen it too.

  Malone stood with his arms folded, watching through the glass. Tom suspected Malone was thinking along the same lines . . . why would Parker have been out that night, running around in all that swamp?

  * * *

  So.

  They found a bar in Naples. Blythe used the restroom then sat across from Tom, watching him for a moment. She cleared her throat. “What are you thinking?”

  “That Guttridge left Parker with instructions — bring the girl’s stuffed animal to Emilio’s camp and leave it there. Malone and I got there just afterward. Parker’s got his scalp lock going — who knows why. Psych himself up, maybe. Or scare anyone who sees him. I don’t know. Sure scared the shit out of me.”

  “We got him printed and we’ll see if his prints are on the stuffed animal. On the tag or the plastic eyes. Probably not but we can look for skin cells, get his DNA.”

  “And if we get anything, that means Guttridge knew about Emilio Vasquez’s little compound out there in the swamp. How?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What does Ed Skokie want to do?”

  “He wants to put this out. Get the public working for us.”

  “He’s convinced?”

  Blythe took a drink and shrugged. “We started with over three hundred Iraq veterans in the state named Frank. Now we’ve got one who was in a unit with a Miccosukee man living where the girl was recovered. Skokie wants to put Guttridge’s picture out wide.”

  “I think that’s a mistake at this point. He’ll run.”

  “No one thinks he’s still around. Not in the state anyway. You do. Why?”

  “For one thing, his daughter Gloria. For another, the same reason he knew about Emilio’s camp. He’s got inside information somehow. I really think there was more taken from the Balfour job than we know about. How about a missing laptop — something like that?”

  She regarded him with her steady, intent eyes.

  “Is that an I-don’t-know silence or an I-know-but-I’m-not-saying silence?”

  She tapped the table. “Forget speculating. Stick with what you know right now.”

  “What I know. Okay. Guttridge was arrested in Lakeland for his VA clinic drug operation, with Hinkley. But I don’t think that’s what ties him to the Vasquez people — they don’t have territory there. Jarvis has specific information on the Vasquez territory, he says you can practically see the piss staining the ground.”

  “Gross.” Blythe made a face.

  “Their claim is on Everglades City up to Tampa. Wilbur Beck said Pedro talked about a guy with a debt — something he owed Pedro. Let’s say Guttridge gets out of jail and goes back to dealing drugs, or at least — you know — he’s on the street. He doesn’t stray too far from his daughter. Their communication is spotty, but the last time he saw her, almost five months ago, he was there at her house within forty minutes of arranging it with his ex-wife. He’s close.”

  “Either that or he just happened to be forty minutes away, hoping the ex-wife would permit a visit.”

  “Maybe. But I get the sense from two witnesses now — Beck and Lupton — that Guttridge had somehow infringed on Vasquez territory, which is between here and Tampa. He’d have been avoiding Polk County, where he’s got a record, but in Tampa, sticking close to his daughter, blending in. I think he was homeless for a little while.”

  “That doesn’t explain why he’d be back in Tampa now, after the part he’s played in a burglary and a kidnapping.”

  Tom ticked off each item with his fingers. “Toyota Highlander found at a wrecking company in Cape Coral, halfway between here and Tampa. I grilled that guy, Deakins — I don’t think he knew Guttridge personally, but Guttridge knew that Deakins would work out their deal under the table. I pushed Deakins and he came up with the Highlander. From there, Guttridge is on foot. Where’s he going to go?”

  “So, the picture can’t hurt. Some trucker that gave him a ride after he dumped his vehicle at Aardvark recognizes him and calls it in.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Anyway, if he’s hitch-hiking, he takes a tractor-trailer ride all the way up to Canada.”

  Tom shook his head. “His daughter said he’s good at hiding. If it was me, I’d stick to what’s familiar. What’s he gonna do, never see his little girl again?”

  “He’s got ten grand of Balfour’s cash and he can pretty much go anywhere.”

  “Nah. I bet he’s off-grid and hiding close.”

  They were at a standstill. Tom knew the FBI was fixated on Valentina Vasquez and Mick Lupton. They were fixated on Emilio Vasquez, too — the kidnapped girl’s stuffed animal was found at a property he owned, even if she was recovered from the Miccosukee Nation.

  And there was more to it. If Guttridge turned out to be a burglar and a kidnapper, the breaker of local, state and federal laws, he would become a national story. A military man selling drugs was one thing. People could understand that. That could be spun as a commentary on the economy, on society’s failure to properly reintegrate soldiers back into civilian life, and the wider drug problem in general. But a solider working for a crime family, burgling the residence of the Florida statewide attorney and kidnapping a seven-year-old Mexican girl into the bargain? That was a bombshell.

  “I thought we had this talk already,” Blythe said.

  “Which talk?”

  “The evidence leads the way. Build your evidence then make the moves. With you, it’s make the move and hope to get the evidence to back you up.”

  “I thought about it some more and I think there’s a part missing from that.”

  She looked up at him. He could see the copper in her eyes, the strands of gray threaded through her blonde hair. “Which is?”

  “Sitting around and waiting for the evidence.” He stood, took out some cash and dropped it on the table. “Am I still on this?”

  She drew in air through her nose then relaxed. “Yes. Until it’s done.”

  “Thank you. Then I need to make a phone call.”

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN: TAMPA

  Over at Tampa PD, Gomez was delighted to hear from him as usual. “Lange. The prodigal son. So, you’re looking back when? Two years?”

  “Yeah. Anything from two years to a few months ago.”

  “I mean, we’ve got enough unidentified, unclaimed bodies to fill Ray Jay Stadium. Unsolved murders? About thirty over the past three years.”

  “Nothing that jumps out as a Vasquez grunt?”

  “Well, I’ll tell you what, why don’t you come have a look?”

  “I think I’ll do that.”

  He drove to Tampa. Habit had him pick up his phone to check in with Katie, in this
case to see about Vance. But that would be selfish. He couldn’t use the terrible thing happening to Vance as a way to reestablish communication with Katie. He would call Vance directly. He tried but got Vance’s voicemail and didn’t know what to say so he hung up, defeated.

  The Violent Crimes Bureau was located downtown in the Tampa Police Department, a twenty-story building walled in glass. Gomez was narcotic and gang enforcement, basement floor, sharing the space with Undercover Operations, a place where guys still smoked and mashed out the butts in overflowing ashtrays, wore white short-sleeved shirts with ties and sized everything up with their stony and suspicious eyes. Gomez still wore the same snakeskin boots he’d sported during the Carrie Gallo case. Seeing them recalled the stranger with the GMC Yukon and his own snazzy footwear.

  Gomez smiled and stuck out a hand. “Fucking Lange,” he said.

  They spent the night going through unsolved murder cases that were drug and gang related, poring over pictures of bloodied bodies, gunshot and knife wounds, crime scenes under bridges and bodies floating in bays. Maybe Juárez didn’t have it over Florida after all. There were photos of gun seizures — smiling police presiding over piles of AR-15-style semiautomatic weapons — mounds of heroin and cocaine and meth, stacks of cash, mug shots, known associates, a list of drug gangs and gang players.

  All members of the Vasquez family were accounted for, everyone Tom already knew. There was no incident in which an identifiable Vasquez family member or employee had been found dead in the Tampa streets or even the Tampa Bay area, which spread to the edge of Lakeland — just the dozens of unknown subjects, dead on the ground, hands hooked into claws or faces blackened with blood.